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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
In the Baghdad slum formerly known as Saddam City, gunfire and bloody mayhem break out in a packed meeting hall, as Shiite sheiks move in to Iraq's power vacuum.
Apr 16, 2003 | "The looting and other sins will have to stop," Baghdad Shiite leader Sheik Rahim Sajhud tells a noisy crowd Tuesday, barely making himself heard over a P.A. system. The next moment the angry sound of machine guns drowns everything out, except the screams of the terrified throng Sajhud is addressing in front of the town hall.
"Welcome to Al-Thawra, city of the revolution," a sign on the building reads. Until a week ago this area of Baghdad was better known as Saddam City, the poorest neighborhood of the Iraqi capital. Now it's the most dangerous one.
The moment the first shots ring out, the crowd surges forward, pushing the sheiks in charge of the gathering up against the glass facade of the building. I fall into a corner, with at least two layers of people on top of me. Despite the weight, it gives me a relative -- and probably misguided -- feeling of safety. There is a moment of total confusion as the bullets rip into the plaster of the front of the building, then the sheiks' guards respond. The resulting firefight leads to even more panic.
Throughout the manic scrambling to get away from the shooters, several people in the crowd keep worrying about the safety of their Western visitor. "I will protect you," says a man who waves a pistol in front of my face. I really don't want to see a weapon at that moment.
One of the windows of the facade shatters, thanks to a bullet or the pressure of the crowd, and glass shards come tumbling down. The crowd scatters into the building, frantically trying to find a way out. But a few minutes later, the shooting subsides. Guards have fought off the attackers and captured one of them. The crowd returns and vents its anger on the alleged assailant, beating him with iron rods, sticks and a mean-looking car jack. When nothing more seems to remain than a red chunk of flesh, they drag the man to the sheiks, who attempt to interrogate him.
It is still not clear who is behind the attack. "It may be a personal vendetta," speculates one man. "No, it was definitely political," says another.
Sheik Sajhud had just been introduced as the new deputy mayor of Thawra -- which is now also being called Salaam (peace) City, or Sadr City, after a prominent Shiite cleric who (it is widely assumed) was killed by Saddam Hussein's agents. The 1.5 to 2 million residents of Thawra are almost all adherents of the Shiite branch of Islam. They suffered much under the old regime, and are now determined not to let anyone dominate them again.
While the U.S. military struggles to restore order in Baghdad -- hooking up in some cases with former Iraqi police officers and Baath Party officials -- in Thawra, it is the Shiite leaders who have moved into the breach. "We, the local religious leaders, the tribal chiefs and prominent people, have decided to set up our own government for our neighborhood," Sheik Sajhud had announced, just before the shooting began.
There is no doubt that U.S. forces in Baghdad are struggling to reestablish law and order and security, even though they say it is not their job to be a police force. Residents are getting increasingly outraged, and frightened, by the looting, shooting and burning. The power vacuum is quickly being filled by neighborhood vigilantes who have set up militias to protect their homes. Sometimes these are led by Baath Party officials who win sympathy from the population with their efforts. In many other places, religious and tribal leaders have taken matters into their own hands. In Thawra, it is the Shiite clerics.
Apparently, some people are not pleased with the idea of the Shiites controlling any part of Baghdad or Iraq. There is no lack of suspects as to who was behind the shooting on Tuesday. There are the hard-line members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, who do not want any alternative center of power to emerge. Then there are the looters, who may not want to give up their Kalashnikov assault rifles and the easy spoils and power that come with possessing them. Conspiracy theorists insisted, on no evidence, that the U.S., determined to keep the Shiites from grabbing power, was behind the attacks.
Conspiracy theories abound in Thawra, and this is a prime occasion for them. Abu Nour, another deputy mayor-designate and one of the organizers of the attempt to establish a local government, sees the hand of the U.S. behind the incident.
"There are many here who are taking large amounts of money now from the coalition in order to keep us down," he says. "We will deal with them." Nour is almost more anti-American than he is anti-Saddam Hussein. "The U.S. is only interested in our oil. What is happening now to all those promises that things would get better here?" He does not want a U.S. presence in Iraq, nor, he says, does he need any help to reestablish services and restore security.
The sheiks in Thawra know that the U.S. regards the Shiite population there with suspicion, fearing they have close links with neighboring Shiite Iran -- one of the two remaining nations on President Bush's "axis of evil."
"We are nobody's agents," states Sheik Rasul Al Gharawi from the nearby Hadj Razak mosque, without even being asked. Iraq's Shiites remember that the Americans left them in the lurch when they rose up in the nation's south against Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War. This, many believe, happened not because the U.S. lacked international support to topple Saddam -- as former President Bush insisted -- but because the U.S. feared the rebels were pro-Iranian. On Tuesday, the main Shiite opposition group, SCIRI, boycotted an Iraqi opposition meeting in Nasariya. American attemps to woo senior religious figures has not yet paid off.
"We want all Iraqis to unite, Shiite, Sunni, Kurd and Arab," says Sheik Gharawi. It seems, though, as if the Shiites, who know they are a majority in Iraq, will not easily allow others to rule them again. "We suffered most under Saddam Hussein," says the sheik, "now it is our turn to have freedom and do things our way, according to how we live."
"Not America, not Saddam, just Islam," chanted the crowd of several hundred people who gathered Tuesday outside the town hall. They came through the unpaved, sewage-filled street of the district, carrying black banners.
